Erik Haaland

You mean this guy? Adam Szofran As of February 1st, 1998, the simming community has lost one of its great contributors. On that date, he withdrew from the community due to a change in employment and location, and has struck out to explore other interests. He is a contributor whose work lies at the very core of many of the functions and add-on's that we enjoy today. That contributor, of course, is Adam Szofran, the author of the programs FS6IPC.DLL, the Flight Sim Data Recorder, and the Freeware Scenery Assembler (FSASM) and it's add-on's. Though Adam is readily recognized for his FSASM module by the mainstream users in our community, he is far less known for his contribution of the FS6IPC.DLL. In our opinion, his single greatest contribution is, indeed, the FS6IPC.DLL. Though the FSASM and Flight Recorder programs have provided an invaluable contribution to the community, the FS6IPC.DLL extends our hobby by orders of magnitude beyond what it would have been otherwise. This code lies at the heart of many, if not all, of the more complex functions that have come along since FS6.0 (FS95). GPS by David Drouin, EFIS by Chris Brett, SquawkBox and Procontroller by Jason, Joe and Marty and many others... All would have been impossible were it not for the FS6IPC.DLL from Adam. Simply put, the FS6IPC.DLL provides a "gateway" that allows Microsoft's Flight Simulator 95 and 98 to communicate outside their own cloistered executables. It provides the interpretation and communications channels that these other programs need to function. Airspeed to GPS? Positional co-ordinates to EFIS? Altitude to SB/ProControl? All these parameters and more are "exported" by FS6IPC.DLL to outside functions. The core data whose absense otherwise would render all of them non-functional. We are proud to recognize Adam for his contribution, but sad in the realization that for the time being, our community has lost a significant contributor and pioneer. We can only hope that Adam will make a reappearance and pick up his effort when the time is right for him. Whether he does or not however, his contributions to the community to-date deserve recognition and a place in the Honor Role. His will be some big shoes to fill. Pete does Adam have anything to do with this?

I myself should be receiving my copy of FS2004 GOLD in the next week or so. To prepare TLUK's aircraft for the transistion.

Ok sorry I guess I misunderstood what you said. Ok so I get the access key from you for free, so it will work with other people's FSUIPCs V3, and I still have to buy my own. Any idea on pricing?

SO basically what you're saying Pete is that right now I'm building a plane that is freeware, more specifically an F-4 Phantom, for which I want to release for FS2002 and FS2004. If I want it in FS2004, then I have to purchase FSUIPC, for something that I am doing on my own time, for which I want everyone to enjoy. Second my parents won't let me buy something online due to a little incident with Paypal, we had our number stolen and $1400 USD stolen from our credit account, so credit card is not the way for me. To recap its that I want to release something free... but I have to pay for something to make it free? To me that makes no sense at all, I respect your choice but just my two sense. Maybe someone will do what Compaq did. Someone will make guess on how it works and reverse engineer another FSUIPC. But if it really comes down to it I'm willing to send a personal check to you when you get it finished. I'm sure there are hundreds of other avid modelers in my same posistion that wish to release freeware aircraft but can't. Ladies and Gentlemen I'm just saddened to think that this might be the death blow to freeware as we know it. Its all been going downhill till now which it hit rock bottom, and then it keeps on going down. Recently I've seen the number of addons released go drastically down. Already a number of other companies and modelers have gone payware because of your decision Pete. This isn't a hobby anymore, its turned into a business :cry: and frankly people can't afford it anymore, like yourself Pete. I can't wait till LOMAC comes out, maybe it will be a fresh start like the orgional FS's were. Please correct me if I'm wrong here.

I think everyone here including Pete is forgetting a major party in the payware world. Minors. ALOT of fs users are under the age of 18 or 21, and most do not have credit cards. When FSUIPC goes payware will I and hundreds if not thousands of minors be hung out to dry because of this? Sure minors can buy FS2004, you just walk down to your nearest best buy and pay cash for it. But can you do the same with FSUIPC? No sir you cannot. Sadly I think MSFS is coming to an end for many minors, I am now seriously considering not buying FS2004, because most of my addons will not work with it without FSUIPC :cry: If Pete could somehow be able to sell in the box form, at Best Buy or EB Games or other electronics stores I'm sure you will... 1. Get more purchases. and 2. Allow everyone who owns FS2004 to purchase it. lastly 3. Everyone can enjoy FS, because if it goes the way its going now, I see a 30-40% drop in FS websites because most addons now need FSUIPC, and simmers because they can't afford to buy FSUIPC online. Sorry Pete about this last thing but it just came to mind. One word, Monopoly